Misterdoctorcoachguy is Dr. Andrew Sutherland, who earned a PhD in English at SUNY Buffalo. While there, he studied primarily under an eminent scholar of American literature, Prof. Neil Schmitz, and a celebrated American poet, the late Robert Creeley.
Dr. Sutherland spent twenty-four years teaching English, history, film, and literature to masters students, undergraduates, and high school students at two universities and a college-prep school. Throughout those twenty-four years of teaching, Dr. Sutherland consistently emphasized close reading in his classroom.
Coach Sutherland has also led baseball and cross country teams, and he has himself competed in pole vaulting, track, the triathlon, distance running from the 5k through the marathon, and several obstacle course runs.
One day while coaching a running team at a prep school, one of his beloved student-athletes called out to him—“Hey, Misterdoctorcoachguy!”—and the name for this site was born.
Teaching literature is not unlike coaching a sport, in misterdoctorcoachguy’s opinion. Covering the fundamentals, then drilling, practicing, and performing, is all it takes to compete in a game or a race, or to learn how to think like a reader.
